KritikalMass

"Hope is a good thing...maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

I wish I'd gotten more involved with the community.

In eight years of playing, I haven't made any friends through this game. A few acquaintances, but no more than that. That's partly because of my playing style--for the first two years, I was on a crappy computer that made teaming extremely difficult; I also have rampant altitis--with 120 characters spread out over 12 servers, it can be kinda tough to put down roots. But those certainly aren't the only reasons.

I've got about 20 people on my Global Friends list. I have no idea who two thirds of them are. Of the rest, most are people I've met through other avenues. (And of those, probably half are people who only played the game briefly.) The only supergroup I've put any time toward is the one started by IRL friends (who have all been pretty much inactive for the last year or so.) They had also been regular participants in the RP community on Virtue...but that was something else I never really got involved in.

I'm sure I've teamed with most of you at one time or another, especially on iTrials. But I don't know who any of you are.

A few admissions about my main villain (and in fact, most-played character,) Doctor Delaware.

-I'm not from Delaware. I've never been to the state...or a state that borders it...or a state that borders a state that borders it. I just made an effort to come up with a very unthreatening supervillain name...and let's face it, Delaware doesn't exactly strike fear into your hearts, does it?

-He's a Robotics MM, and all his bots have names:
DOVR-258, 257, 259 (Battle Drones)
DMND-79, 81 (Protector Bots)
BLHN-42 (Assault Bot)

The letters have meanings that relate to the state. DOVR Class is for Dover, the state capital. DMND is for Diamond--one of Delaware's unofficial nicknames is the Diamond State. BLHN is for the state bird, the Blue Hen.

The numbers also have meanings, of a sort. Each class started at 1...and when one died, I would change the name to the next unused number. I kept a pretty accurate count too, until I finally gave up somewhere in the early 40s, because my bots were dying too fast. (I didn't count deaths during Strike Forces either, for the same reason.) The numbers haven't changed since then.

My lore power is Warworks, which have been given the designation DSTR-1 and 2 (after the Delaware Destroyers, backing band of George Thorogood.)

-Some of the most fun I've had with that character was in the first days of the Rikti Mothership Raids. I kept ending up on raids with a hero called The Bostonian, which led to a great deal of geographically-based heckling in the broadcast channel. Good times.

-Inspired by the colors of the University of Delaware, most of his costumes are dominated by bright blue and bright yellow. His first costume (blue lab coat, yellow pants) used to draw complaints from other players. They would beg me to switch, so I did: blue pants, yellow lab coat. They were not impressed.

-I recently completed a secondary build for him--the GD Bots/Traps, designed by Dechs Kaison. Haven't actually used it, though, as it would require completely changing my MM play style, and it's a bit late to do that. (OK, it was probably a bit late to finish the build--which I did in mid October--but I was committed.)

Update: I made it! From Thursday to Sunday, got the character from 1 to level 50. Did nothing but trials and TFs, with the exception of the Ghost Falcon mission (and there I just went straight to the objective and clicked it; didn't defeat any enemies.) Used plenty of XP boosts, though.

The rundown:

Thursday, 1 to 26:
2 Death From Below runs
Positron 1 & 2

Friday, 26 to 34:
Synapse
Citadel
Sister Psyche

Saturday, 34 to 46:
Manticore
Numina
Admiral Sutter
Calvin Scott
Penelope Yin
Drowning In Blood
Imperious

Sunday, 46 to 50:
Dr. Quaterfield
Faathim the Kind (hit 50 on the third mission)

Thanks to everyone I teamed with, for making this possible. You guys and gals are awesome.

Kinda meant to post this a while ago, so that more people could see it and choose to participate. But whatevs.

One of the things I've wanted to do, but never had the chance, is to start a new character and take him as far as I can on Double XP weekend--specifically, by focusing on Task Forces and such. Well, this is the last chance, so I'd better do it now. Right?

Ah, but what kind of character? And that's when I thought of something else I've never done: put myself in the game. (Had the idea for a while, finally pushed to go for it when I saw someone else--with a much more awesome first name than mine--do the same thing.)



Here I am, in all my glory (such as it is.) For some reason, all my screenshots look horizontally squished, so that this pic doesn't do justice to my physique (best described as "garbage bag filled with mashed potatoes." But in game, it's pretty close. Staff/WP brute, name of Luke Johnson.

So if this sounds like the kind of thing you want to do...well, go ahead. I'll be on Virtue as much as I can over the next four days. Who knows, maybe we could get a dedicated team.

I ran through the original version of the Positron TF only once. I was at work.

For being a pain in the butt: Sappers, Carnies, DE Cairns, and anyone who had that power that made a crapton of rocks and dust fly up into the air, making you take a bunch of damage and unable to see a blasted thing.

For just being plain freaky to look at: Herdling Lashers, and the Rularuu eyeball things. GAAAAAAAAAAAH.

That is just fantastic.

If you saw the builds for any of my characters, you would have to assume that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. (And you're probably not far off.)

I usually skip Taunt/Confront...and even if I have the powers, I rarely use them. (This might be a side effect of being a predominantly solo player.) None of my characters have Tough or Weave. I leave Brawl and Sprint in the bottom row of my power tray, because that's what I'm used to. I take the direct attack powers with Masterminds. I prefer using full IO sets to frankenslotting, because I just can't be bothered. I've made all of three macros ever, only one of which was actually useful (that being the "target nearest Lifegiving Essence" in the DD iTrial.)

And yet, to the best of my knowledge, I have never been kicked off a team for searing incompetence. (Being a jerk, yes. That's happened a couple of times. But they had it coming.)

No. It still needs a lot of development work, and there's no more development.

You can play it as-is on the beta, though. I recommend doing so; there's some really fun content.

Thanks for all your hard work, and best of luck in the future. Take care, man.

Doctor Delaware (robotics/traps MM) was level 49, closing on 50, while I was finishing up the Project: Destiny story arc. Needed the help of one of my friends to do the final mission (Lord Recluse is a nasty nasty,) and when it was over, I was *just* shy of hitting the level. ARRGH!

But! The contact told me to go talk to Lord Recluse himself, so that I could tell him about how I kicked his butt in the future. That conversation triggered the end of the arc, which gave me the story completion XP bonus, which gave me a very satisfying DING.

Might be the best timing I've had for a level. Certainly for hitting 50.

Hot dang! There's another South Dakotan that plays this game!

My first ever teamup in this game: I was TeddyRoosevelt; my teammate was Vengeful Santa.

Yep. Theodore Roosevelt and Santa Claus.

Who is King Midas? What's his story? Were we ever going to see him?

Doctor Delaware will be feverishly working on his own device that will destroy the universe before the shutdown gets its chance.

What? He's a mad scientist.

I'm enjoying the Nature Affinity set a lot. My water/nature corr did pretty well with it (until I got to Graham Easton's arc. Stupid Yellow Ink Men.)

My nature/fire defender isn't moving along as quickly. Mostly because (a) he's a villain, and (b) he's on Pinnacle. Have yet to find a team (although I have received compliments on the name.)

I love my dark/dark defender, but didn't want to go past 40 with him, because I couldn't change the colors of the epic powers. When I24 hits, I can...which is great news for ButterscotchDispensr.

Also, I severely love the blaster changes. They were one of my favorite ATs anyway, so...yeah. This is going to rock.

I think the one mentioned that I'd most like to see is Multiplicity. (I even made a version of it in the Power Set Suggestions subforum.) I had a more natural approach to the 'blast' power--throwing crates and barrels. (And flaming barrels!)

Magnetism and a mad science-based control set would also be cool. I'm also liking Super Speed Melee/Defense. Growth would be super-awesome, but alas, not likely.

One that hasn't been mentioned, but might be cool, is vibration blast. Kind of an obscure power, it has potential.